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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28981416">Learning Lessons</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett'>SegaBarrett</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Becoming an Important Historical Figure, Gen, Time Travel, Time Travel for Historical Research</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 08:54:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,747</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28981416</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>That's the way it had always been, and the way it always would be.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Past Imperfect Future Unknown 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Learning Lessons</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsin/gifts">Elsin</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jamie had heard it as long as he could remember.</p><p>“The boys go to war, the girls go to magic school.”</p><p>His mother had repeated it over and over again, each and every time one of his seven sisters gave a point of view on the War, and each and every time that Jamie had expressed his wish to attend school as his sisters had.</p><p>“The boys go to war, the girls go to magic school.”</p><p>According to his mother, a tall and raven-haired woman who more than once had said she was surprised it wasn’t gray after having to raise this lot, that was the way it always had been and that would be the way it always would be.</p><p>“But I feel it,” Jamie tried to tell her, and she had shushed him and told him to go out and play. </p><p>“You won’t have much longer to do it,” she said, and went back to twirling her arms and making the clouds dance, making tiny trickles of rain appear at only the edge of town.</p><p>Jamie turned on his heels and walked until he was in the marketplace, watching as people walked with their baskets and picked up bread and pastries and fruit.</p><p>“Whatcha doin’?” asked a voice behind him, and he whirled around to see a girl with short black hair and blue eyes staring back at him.</p><p>He let out an annoyed sigh.</p><p>“Vincenza. What do you want?”</p><p>“You’re rude,” Vincenza replied, flipping a wooden rod casually above her head.</p><p>“Where’d you find that?” Jamie asked.</p><p>“Why would I tell you? After you were rude to me?” she spun the rod around again and then tossed it in the air and caught it, effortlessly.</p><p>Jamie didn’t answer her question and instead asked, “You starting magic school next month?”</p><p>Her face fell.</p><p>“Yeah,” Vincenza murmured, looking down and kicking a clump of dirt. </p><p>“What are you looking so glum about?” Jamie asked. “I would love to go to magic school. I mean, I would really do anything.”</p><p>“Then go to stupid magic school!” Vincenza declared, sticking her tongue out at him. “What’s stopping you?”</p><p>“Uh, that I’m a boy.” Jamie stuck his own tongue out. “I have to go out and fight, and I’m not going to be any good at it. All the boys are going to laugh at me.”</p><p>“That’s not true,” Vincenza said.</p><p>“You laugh at me all the time.”</p><p>“That is true.” Vincenza paused. “What if we both got what we wanted?”</p><p>“Huh?” Jamie asked.</p><p>“For one, you’re going to have to act a lot less stupid than that. Girls can’t get away with their mouths hanging out like a clueless loser the way that guys can.”</p><p>“What are you even talking about?”</p><p>“What have we always been told? ‘Boys go to war, girls go to magic school’, right? But the people running the magic school and the guys running the army haven’t met either one of us and would have no idea who we were.”</p><p>“What’s your point? Just to make me feel even more insignificant?”</p><p>“No. It’s to give you a great idea that if you were smart, you really would have thought up by yourself,” Vincenza replied, flashing a triumphant grin. “Now, come with me.”</p><p>***</p><p>Vincenza’s mother, after graduating from magic school with flying colors, had gone into business sewing clothes for the people who lived in the village. Although most of what she created was made to order, there had also been plenty of situations in which her magic touch hadn’t been able to keep up with the styles people wanted all the time.</p><p>Vincenza opened the closet and fished out a few dresses, tossing them over to Jamie before running her fingers over the flowing men’s shirts and trousers that hung right beside them. </p><p>Jamie watched her, looking nervously at the dresses that had been flung before him. They were long and brown and plain but somehow imposing. If he took on Vincenza’s plan, then that meant that he would need to commit to being… whoever he was going to pretend to be… for the entire time he was enrolled in the magic school. Was there any way that he could pull it off for that long, or even for an hour? Buckling under pressure tended to be his specialty, and he could already feel himself crumpling, folding into himself like paper.</p><p>Vincenza appeared to have no such doubts. She threw off the dress she had been wearing without so much of a “do you mind” and threw the shirt on, then stepped into the trousers before rooting around in the drawer and coming up with a pair of scissors.</p><p>She looked at him and inquired, “Well?”</p><p>And then Jamie didn’t have much of a choice. He climbed into the dress and let Vincenza trim his hair until it was much less bushy boy’s hair and more practical girl’s hair in a little bob. </p><p>“I think we should add a hat, too,” Vincenza said, pulling a sun hat made of lavender straw out of the closet and placing it on his head, before plucking a narrow black hat for herself.</p><p>“How will I do magic with this hat on my head?”</p><p>“It probably won’t require you to do somersaults,” Vincenza replied. “Now we will meet tomorrow, as soon as the sun rises, get into our disguises, and then we need to never speak of this again. Unless something goes horribly wrong – then, scratch me your initial in the dust and we will meet the next morning as the sun rises all over again.”</p><p>And they went home.</p><p>***</p><p>The next morning, Jamie didn’t say anything at breakfast about his plan, or anything at all. He knew that his mother could read his face, and he kept it hidden until he slipped off, telling his mother in a hurried voice that he was going to get down to the docks in time to start training to go to war.</p><p>“Wait, Jamie, come back,” his mother called, “Let me give you a hug goodbye.”</p><p>But he was already out the door, because he knew that if she hugged him, he would tell her the truth.</p><p>When he made it to the town square, Vincenza was standing there, though in her trousers he almost didn’t recognize her at first. He took a moment to slip behind the public baths and dress, too, stepping forward with his odd new get-up and feeling as if everyone was going to be able to see right through him.</p><p>“So, what’s your name?” Vincenza asked, as soon as she saw him. </p><p>“What? You know my name,” Jamie replied.</p><p>Vincenza let out a long, exasperated sigh.</p><p>“You can’t go by Jamie if you’re pretending to be a girl.”</p><p>“Why not? There are plenty of girls named Jamie.”</p><p>Vincenza, for once, seemed to not to be able to argue with that.</p><p>“I’m guessing,” Jamie pressed, finally getting the upper hand for the first time he could remember, “That you’re just going to go by Vincent?”</p><p>“Shut up,” Vincenza replied, “…Vincenzo, okay. Good luck. Now, let’s get out of here.” She pointed up ahead. “That’s the way to magic school. And the army is meeting for training here… well, I guess as soon as everyone decides to get here.”</p><p>Jamie turned to the dirt road and began to lumber down it, but turned once more to look back at Vincenza.</p><p>He should say goodbye, he thought as he looked back at her.</p><p>But something told him that he would see her again.</p><p>***</p><p>A few miles down the road, a horse and carriage pulled by, and the old woman, her white hair tied in a braid, in the carriage craned her head to look at Jamie.</p><p>“Where are you off to, girl?” the woman inquired.</p><p>“Magic school,” Jamie replied, after he realized that the woman was actually talking to him.</p><p>“Well, get in then. We’re bringing my granddaughter Carabella there and since we’re going there anyway, why would we go along and leave you to walk all this way?”</p><p>The old woman stopped her carriage and allowed Jamie to awkwardly climb into the carriage. The girl he was sitting next to was a year or two older and had long, raven-black hair and caramel skin. She didn’t say a word to greet him when he sat beside her, and Jamie didn’t have much to say either.</p><p>When they arrived in front of the huge marble building, Jamie thought he might start crying. It was everything that he had always dreamed of, from his mother’s stories, the ones that she would tell at night when she was trying to get all of her children to go to bed.</p><p>They had worked the wrong way on Jamie, of course – he had always wanted to stay up later and learn a little bit more, wanted to dream a little bit more before the night snuck him into the world where his dreams didn’t always make sense but seemed loaded with meaning anyway.</p><p>“All right girls,” the old woman said, “I’ll be back to check on you tomorrow, Carabella, just to make sure that you’re getting along all right.”</p><p>Carabella let out a little hiss and departed the carriage, shrugging her shoulders. Jamie thanked the woman and then hastened to keep up – trying to keep step with Carabella required all of his strength, and he found himself wheezing by the time they arrived at the front door.</p><p>“You could have said ‘slow down’, you know,” Carabella said to him, raising an eyebrow and pushing the huge golden doors open.</p><p>Jamie shrugged. He was worried about talking, about revealing himself so early, and he was also stunned by the beauty of the girl before him. The only girls he had been around had been his sisters and Vincenza, who had tended to feel like a sister due to the fact that it felt as if she had always been there.</p><p>“You ready?” Carabella inquired as they stepped inside, and Jamie only found it in himself to nod.</p><p>***</p><p>They sat in what looked to be some sort of an auditorium, with soft plush seats all pushed together. Jamie found himself sitting beside Carabella, who didn’t seem to care either way. </p><p>“Welcome to our new incoming class,” the woman at the front of the auditorium said, “I apologize for everything being a little cramped this year, but I’ll have you all know that our senior mages are hard at work repairing the damage to our Grand Theatre that occurred after the tornado last year. This will just have to make do in the meantime. I would like to introduce myself to all you ladies – my name is Sage Plemington, and I will be guiding each and every one of you through the magical arts, though for some of you it may be dragging you kicking and screaming. But remember – we haven’t had a failure yet.”</p><p>Jamie wondered if he would be the first, given that he wasn’t even supposed to be here at all. Maybe there was something the girls had that he didn’t, no matter how hard he tried, some elusive gift.</p><p>“I’ll get you all sent off to your rooms so you can start getting acquainted. There will be ten girls to each class and all of the classes are perfectly fine, so I don’t want to see any swapping this year. Trust me – we will know.”</p><p>Ms. Plemington began to read off names, and Jamie was surprised to hear his own on the list – how had she known that he would be coming, when he hadn’t known until today?</p><p>She listed his name, and Carabella’s too. She had sent them both to something called the Azure Classroom.</p><p>And as he shuffled off behind Carabella, still silent, and he wondered how in the world he was going to continue to be someone he wasn’t in a room full of people who could do things he couldn’t even begin to wrap his head around.</p><p>***</p><p>Jamie spent the day sitting in class, watching objects whip around the room, disappear and come back. He tried to hold back his wonder – he was probably failing at it, though – because maybe, if he belonged here, he would already know how to do this stuff.</p><p>He wondered, for the first time, how Vincenza was faring in army training. Had she blended in perfectly or was she feeling just as out of place, yet still drawn, as he did? </p><p>Maybe he should sneak out and meet her in town. Yes, she’d said that it was only for emergencies, but…</p><p>And maybe it was thinking that world that somehow conjured it up – maybe he was a better or worse magic student than he’d thought he was, because suddenly it felt as if the entire room was picked up and thrust backwards.</p><p>He hadn’t expected this, of course.</p><p>And he even less expected the entire classroom to be dropped just down the road from the square in which he had met Vincenza earlier that day.</p><p>***</p><p>“Carabella?” Jamie called out, looking for the only person whose name he remembered. The place was in shambles and there was dust and wood everywhere.</p><p>“Jamie?” called back a voice, but it wasn’t Carabella’s that he heard. It was Vincenza’s.</p><p>He jolted upwards, pushing debris away from him. Somehow, the only thing that seemed to be injured was his knee, and he decided he could worry about that latter.</p><p>Vincenza was standing there, a huge scar across her face. Her clothing was tattered around the edges, as if she had run through a ravine. </p><p>“What happened to you?” Jamie asked.</p><p>“What happened to you?” she echoed, “Your whole school just came this way. Something bad is going down, and we need to stop it.” He heard her start to breathe more heavily, then look around. Jamie couldn’t tell if anyone else was left alive. “Something bad is going down, and we’re the only ones who can stop it. Take my hand.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Take my hand. You’re going to use your magic.”</p><p>“I haven’t learned any yet!”</p><p>Vincenza reached out and grabbed his hand and, as heat flowed through his body to hers, or maybe it was the other way around, Jamie shut his eyes in fear.</p><p>A moment later, they were back where they had started.</p><p>And the only sound was that of birds chirping.</p><p>It was the middle of the night.</p><p>“It’s fifty years ago,” Vincenza said, like it was the sort of thing someone could just know.</p><p>***</p><p>“So where do we go?” Jamie inquired. He had to just trust her, and not ask how she knew. He had to just trust her and try not to wonder too much – because he suspected that the price of wondering was to know why this had been necessary. To know that war, the war Vincenza had signed up for with a fake hat and a different name was going to kill them all if they didn’t go back and stop it.</p><p>“Where it all began,” Vincenza replied, and Jamie stared at her.</p><p>“Where what began?” he asked.</p><p>“Don’t you know anything?” she replied, “Haven’t you ever been interested in the history of our land? Haven’t you ever wondered why the girls all go to magic school, while all the boys must go off to war? Don’t you even know who it is we’re fighting in the war?”</p><p>Jamie blinked.</p><p>“I just thought that that was the way that it had always been.” And the way that it always had to be.</p><p>As they walked, Vincenza taught him: fifty years ago, it had not been that way, because it had not needed to be that way. Fifty years ago had been even before Jamie and Vincenza’s parents had been born, back when their grandparents were young and pretty and happy. Their grandparents all went to magic school because, they said in the village, that it was important to know the magical arts for any and all situations that might require it some way or another.</p><p>It could be healing or it could be saving someone or, as Vincenza knew, it could be time travel to fix the things that had been shattered somewhere along the line and needed to be put back together.</p><p>“Fifty years ago, we all lived together.”</p><p>“We?” Jamie echoed.</p><p>“The town,” Vincenza said, “This place wanted for nothing. Everyone lived in peace, and everyone was trained in the magical arts, whether they were any good at it or not. There wasn’t any need to need to be good at it, because… well, there was no need to be afraid of anything, no need to defend against anything.”</p><p>“So what changed? And how do you know about this? My grandparents never talked about any of this stuff.”</p><p>“They say that we were attacked.”</p><p>“They say?” Jamie echoed.</p><p>Vincenza shrugged.</p><p>“I guess that’s what we’re here to find out, right?” she said. “I guess there must be more to that than meets the eye, because everything that I found on it seems to have, well, gaps.”</p><p>“Gaps?”</p><p>“Yeah, I heard you,” Vicenza replied. “We should get down to the Teal House.”</p><p>The Teal House was where the queen lived, where the queen had always lived.</p><p>“Do you think they’ll talk to us?” Jamie asked. He had never been inside the Teal House, but his older sister had been there once. He wished that he could remember what she had told him about it.</p><p>“They’ll have to. I don’t know how much time we have back here, but if we don’t stop this attack, well, I figure once we get back to our own time, we’ll have been completely blown off the map.”</p><p>“I still don’t know how you know all of this, but you don’t want to be a mage. Why do you want to be a warrior in a war you want to stop from happening?”</p><p>“If we can fix this, then we won’t have to choose. Come along.”</p><p>***</p><p>“So how exactly do you plan to get us into the Teal House?” Jamie inquired, and Vincenza, by reply, stood up straight and replaced her hat on top of her head.</p><p>“We walk right in,” she said, and walked into the courtyard with a swagger that sent a flash of nerves down Jamie’s back. He didn’t know how she knew her way around the Teal House and, even more-so, he didn’t know why in the world she hadn’t told him that she did. How did he know so little about her all this time, having grown up beside her for years?</p><p>He watched as Vincenza stood even straighter up, swung her hips with even more authority. He couldn’t speak as he watched it, as he felt he was, at last, seeing her truly become somebody else. He wondered if this person was someone who he liked or not, or more significantly, whether this was someone who would like him. He certainly hoped so, considering she was his only ally in this strange place.</p><p>Well, not strange place exactly. Strange time. Things had been strange for him for a while now.</p><p>There were three guards at the door to the palace, and they looked over Vincenza first and then Jamie.</p><p>“Hello, Prince Derrick and Princess Moon,” they called out, and Jamie stopped walking and nearly stumbled into the dirt before Vincenza grabbed his arm and pulled him along. </p><p>“Stay cool, princess,” she mumbled to him, and he blinked but followed along, stammering out some excuse that should have just died on his tongue.</p><p>“Prince? Princess?” Jamie echoed, “Who do they think we are?”</p><p>“The Prince and Princess, as they just said,” Vincenza replied. “Now, we need to get to the Center and stop this attack before it begins.”</p><p>He followed her, because she seemed to know where she was going – he wanted to ask why, but now he had come to understand that maybe Vincenza knew things that she was just not willing or maybe able to explain to him.</p><p>Maybe she truly was the magical one.</p><p>There was a gold, ornate door at the center of the palace – the Center, it must be, Jamie considered – and as before Vincenza simply walked right through it as if she belonged there.</p><p>And maybe, Jamie was beginning to think, she did.</p><p>Vincenza’s face, shrouded in the hat, looked as if it was glowing. </p><p>He couldn’t quite hear her as she began to give commands, as she told the guards not to trust some person but to trust somebody else, and none of the names made any sense to him.</p><p>He wondered why his mother had never told her about this village’s history, and more than that why he had never thought to ask. Perhaps he had been content, then, thinking that things were the way that they had always been and the way things would always need to be.</p><p>Vincenza’s face looked deadly serious when she walked back over to him and said, “Let’s go. We need to get back.”</p><p>“Did you fix it all?” he asked.</p><p>“I hope so. But we’ll know. We’ll know when we get back,” she said, and she turned her face away.</p><p>He wished he knew what to say, but was learning more and more that he knew nothing at all.</p><p>***</p><p>When they collided with the ground, having hurtled through time again, Jamie closed his eyes for a long time.</p><p>He wasn’t sure that he wanted to open them – what might be different, now? What if the future turned out to be worse?</p><p>What if it was a future that didn’t contain either of them at all? Would they simply fade into the background, simply cease to be entirely?</p><p>“Come on,” Vincenza said, and he felt her grabbing his wrist and pulling him upwards.</p><p>“What are you two doing here?” declared a voice, and when Jamie opened his eyes he saw Carabella standing there, hands on her hips. A moment later, she paused. “You do both really look like them. They were right.” She turned and walked away, leaving Jamie staring after her.</p><p>And then they saw it. Hanging in the town square, right behind them, was a painting.</p><p><i>Valiant Prince Derrick and Princess Moon</i>, it said.</p><p>Jamie blinked.</p><p>This would be a lot to live up to, he mused.</p><p>“Shouldn’t you be in class?” rang out a voice. </p><p>Now, he would have his chance.</p>
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